WINDSOR IN A NEW LIGHT
Now, she can walk to her office on Malden Road in LaSalle in five minutes, go home at lunchtime to check on her children and toss in load of laundry, if need be.
Kobosz was so enthusiastic about her new home she turned into a recruiter and persuaded her sister, Dr. Joanna Starczewski, to consider Windsor for her residency.
Starczewski opened a family practice in LaSalle just a few weeks ago and now teaches at the Schulich campus.
Kobosz said her sister and her family aren’t the only physicians deciding to move to the area.
“I know of two or three (specialists) that have come here in the last three or four years,” Kobosz said. “We’re still short a few specialties, but that will change with the new hospital.”
Dr. Stephanie Mulaosmanovic was one of 24 students in the first undergraduate class at the Schulich campus in 2008.
She now serves as a family doctor with the Windsor Essex Community Health Centre and is an adjunct professor at the Schulich campus.
“I remember the small group felt more like a family,” Mulaosmanovic said.
“We looked out for each other in class. We hung out together. We really cared about each other and wanted to make sure everyone was doing OK.”
Though there were inconveniences — such as classes in basements, finicky technology for satellite classes and even a strike at the University of Windsor in 2008 — the students took pride in being the pioneers of this bold new adventure, said Mulaosmanovic, who graduated in 2012.
“I remember we were shuttled off campus in cars to do our classes during the strike,” she said. “Looking back those didn’t seem like big things.”
Windsor’s first medical students were treated like mini-celebrities and dubbed the Rock Docs, Mulaosmanovic recalled.
“When people learned we were students from the Windsor medical school, they always thanked and welcomed us.”
Many graduates compared their Windsor experience to their elementary school days in the way the same group moved through the day taking classes together for four years.
Similar schedules also led to group social activities and holding fundraisers for community causes.
“I like the smaller program,” said Dr. Carolyn Adams, whose greatgrandfather Frank Adams was one of the founders of the Windsor Medical Services Plan and an investor in the Medical Arts Building now used by the medical school as a residence for out of town students.
“You get more hands-on experience because there aren’t so many of us. There’s a good community atmosphere here. I value the relationships of a community program.”
Adams said strong community support is one of the reasons the medical students and residents are so active in holding fundraisers for local causes.
“We want to give back to the community because we feel so well supported,” Adams said.
The Windsor native is in her second year of residency in family medicine. Adams plans to take another year’s training specializing in emergency medicine and, after that, work at Windsor Regional Hospital in the emergency department.
“I got to try it as part of my rotation at the hospital and I got a taste for it,” Adams said.
“That’s the benefit of a smaller program, trying lots of things. You just don’t know what’ll get your interest.”
Dr. Fawad Ahmed had no interest in being a doctor until Grade 10, when a his English teacher at Herman high school had her class knit hats to take to the hospital for cancer patients.
“I think I was one of a couple guys in the class and it took me all year to knit mine because I had to learn how,” said Ahmed, who graduated from med school in 2013.
“Being at the hospital lit a bit of fire in me. Then when the Schulich campus opened in Windsor, that allowed me to go to medical school at home.”
The thought of being able to help the people in the region that had accepted his family after they move here from Dubai in 2002 was a great motivation to set up his family practice in Essex.
“Through our program you got to feel the dynamics and needs of patients in our system,” Ahmed said.
“You can appreciate the subtleties of our population. The unique need of the immigrant population, the scarcity of primary care, the needs of the elderly and of people having to travel from rural centres.”
Knowing rural centres were the most underserviced in a region that was underserviced was the reason he located in Essex in 2015.
“I get to be involved with my patients here, but I also get to do things at the hospital,” Ahmed said. “I like being on the front lines and working in different sub-specialties.”
He also teaches at the Schulich campus and has written some curriculum.
“I like being in the classroom because the students’ enthusiasm reminds you of why you got into this in the first place,” Ahmed said.
“Teaching medicine is also unique in one way. A lot of things you can’t teach in a class or from a textbook. You have to physically transfer the skill sets from one to another working with actual patients.”
Learning those soft skills individually from mentors, such as how to handle a difficult patient or deliver bad news, is another benefit of the program’s intimacy.
“I think aside from benefit of having the school’s graduates staying here and it drawing physicians from elsewhere to Windsor, it has also improved the quality of medicine being practised,” Mulaosmanovic said.
“Being involved in teaching or answering students’ questions at a hospital helps keep you current. You constantly have to update your knowledge and that’s good for everyone in health care.”